Fuck it. Don’t even argue with them. Just let natural selection take its course. Honestly this could be a blessing in disguise.
In the US, people don’t go to the doctor when they have a problem, they go as a last resort because they have to ask themselves how much it would cost.
18% of Americans haven’t ever seen a doctor and 40% of Americans haven’t seen one for 5 years.
A number of studies in low income communities in the south show that over 60% of people in those communities have intestinal parasites. That’s just the ones we know of.
One thing we know for sure is that ivermectin is about as magic as they say it is for parasites only. It’s a fantastic drug for that.
Over 60% of low income citizens would likely feel much better after getting their parasites removed from ivermectin. So what they are seeing, seems true. They could be sick from something else but get rid of a long standing comorbidity of a pariste infection, you bet they are feeling good. They just think that relief from the varied symptoms from parasite is actually something else cured.
This ivermectin religion has real miracles, it’s just not the ones they think they are. This belief is entirely created because Americans don’t have healthcare. That’s why this belief isn’t found elsewhere.
Doesn’t even need to be eliminated parasites.
“I am solving the problem by taking the medicine, and I am smart because I’m using a secret medicine they don’t want me to know about” causes the brain to release the good feelings chemicals which does make you feel better.
In the US, people don’t go to the doctor when they have a problem, they go as a last resort because they have to ask themselves how much it would cost.
In Estonia it’s sorta the same except a visit costs nothing for the GP and 20 euros for the initial visit to a specialty doctor (subsequent visits are free).
We just don’t go to the doctor because we’re stubborn as fuck and “it’ll heal on its own”.
Not if you don’t rub some dirt in it first it won’t
18% of Americans haven’t ever seen a doctor and 40% of Americans haven’t seen one for 5 years.
What the fuck? Have you a source for those numbers because they’re shocking
Hmm looks like some stats I pulled were from polls, and I fell victim to people paraphrasing that around 20% of rural people not having a primary care doctor in the last few years as “not even having seen a doctor” sorry about that.
40% of Americans haven’t seen a doctor in 5 years: https://studyfinds.org/americans-avoiding-the-doctor/ https://www.aarp.org/pri/topics/health/coverage-access/health-care-rural-america/?
But the limited stats on primary care and a lot of self reporting is very bad.
62% parasites infection: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.10.23284404v1.full
Typing in “southern united states rural primary care access” in Kagi has a lot of sad results.
You got the fucking receipts
I haven’t seen a doctor in at least a decade and a half, when my parents took me to checkups as a child. I’m very lucky to be healthy, and am in the gym 3-5 days a week to keep my streak going as long as possible.
However, I’m calling bullshit on this:
A number of studies in low income communities in the south show that over 60% of people in those communities have intestinal parasites. That’s just the ones we know of.
That sounds insane to me. 60% is a motherfucking epidemic. Where’s the source for these studies???
It’s extremely common in Africa. My ex who was Zulu hated that you couldn’t get deworming here. Ignore the fact that in Ontario you aren’t getting worms. She brought her misconceptions that KZN is like here.
Upvote or downvote. <Captain button meme>. Fuck.
What’s the thing with ivermectin? Do they own shares from the manufacturers or something?
Early laboratory research indicated that ivermectin could kill the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this was later found to require, in many cases, toxic doses far exceeding those approved for humans. Antivaxxers latched onto this and ran with it, spreading the misinformation far and wide.
Having worms is common in poorer parts of the world and deworming humans is quite common. I imagine it’s made its way through immigrant communities and then white people latched on.
Something else white people stole 🤣
Well, there was evidence that it helped and then mainstream pharmaceutical buried the evidence and killed all the scientists. Cause it’d affect their bottom line. And then you’ve got the secret kabal controlling everything that wants us hooked on their drugs for mind control. The anti-christ is alive, right now, and his name is healthcare /s
The real reason is probably that it was a dewormer that helped some very sick people feel better when they had covid, and then conspiracies about it took off when scientists said “yeah, that’s probably not helpful for covid”. Science is a messy process, but because of the authoritative way it’s taught, people have trouble connecting the process of finding answers in real time with the firmness of the results. That, plus grifters pumping people full of fear and anxiety so they keep coming back for the next hit. It’s not pushing ivermectin because they have stake in it. It’s pushing ivermectin because it fits a pre-established narrative and thinking is, like, real tough, y’all. You gotta, like, put effort into that. Which is dumb. I’ve got this one drum, I’mma bang it all day.
Much like every culture war issue the right grabs onto: there’s no logical basis for it. It became an in-group thing to signal to others that you’re “one of the good ones”. Sane people pointed out how bad it was which only made ivermectin more entrenched as THE healthy thing like crystals, red light therapy, essential oils, basically anything not backed up by a healthcare expert.
I think its just people that can’t tell memes from facts.
IMO, this is one of the consequences of not having universal health insurance that isn’t talked about enough. If the bar for going to the doctor is “about to lose a limb from infection”, then people become vulnerable to pseudo-scientific garbage, simply because they hardly ever receive advice from actual medical professionals.
Great point. Hard to trust doctors when it’s $500 to not find anything over and over and over and over.
This is one my comment talking point. When people have to think about “can I afford this?” anytime they need to goto the doctor, then they’ll only go when it’s serious. But they are not qualified medical professionals to decide what needs medical attention or not. So they seek advice from other people, past experiences and Internet and we have this problem.
Honestly, it shouldn’t cost that much to just goto a doctor’s office and return. We don’t need MD for everything, have other professional people there that are qualified enough to tell you when something doesn’t need attention, or simple solutions. Maybe just cleaning a scrap, or giving you a brace for minor sprain, all those without having to see MD.
We need to go back to printed almanacs
Agreeing about universal healthcare but adding sufficient PTO to go to the Dr.
You should not need to use vacation days to visit the doctor. Or to recover from an illness.
You should not have to be ill or have to explain why you need to take a day off. Just have sufficient undesignated PTO to maintain good mental and physical health.
Thats my deal. I have
Add to that the pleatora of fraudulent TV doctors
That’s a really good point
Vaccines are often free here
That’s great, but I’m talking about broad coverage of health care needs and a general habit of seeing a doctor when you’re sick, injured etc.
Can we just throw people like this off a cliff already?
Peer reviewed articles on Ivermectin from the US NIH.gov National Institute of Health.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/?term=ivermectin
One article of note: Proc Jpn Acad Ser B Phys Biol Sci. 2011 Feb 10;87(2):13–28. doi: 10.2183/pjab.87.13 Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective
What exactly is your point?
Just including some actual scientific data from the NIH for any one interested.
I hate to be that guy.
But won’t this cull Republicans the most?
Ivermectin does literally everything. I believe it gives you sexual powers.
It cured my aching back and fixed my deviated septum.
Quand on est con, c’est pas pour un jour…
My parents legitimately believe ivermectin is a cure all and are stockpiling it. They take it for just about anything. They also believe plenty of other wacky things like viruses don’t exist and cancer is just a fungal infection.
My dad last year nearly lost his foot after it got infected. They let it fester for months and only treated it with like essential oils or some other pseudoscience. He eventually had to go to the emergency room and stay at the hospital and receive antibiotics. 🙄
My dad literally will not talk to me because I refused to say that ivermectin is a miracle cure. He’s angry at me for some study or article that he thinks I am obsessed with (I honestly have no idea what he’s talking about), and insists I retract my belief in it or we can’t have a relationship. Since I haven’t the first clue what he’s even on about, he made his choice…
Can’t wait for the next round of crackpot email forwards. Hopefully he sticks to his word and won’t contact me anymore.
Edit - the last time I spoke with him was at my step mom’s funeral, where she had just died of cancer, which they treated with….I’ll give you one guess.
We aren’t dealing with rational people.
I have a similar experience with my own father after he started using TikTok and Instagram, though it’s not about ivermectin (spoiler: he thinks I’m a “commie”). I think old people are just not equipped to survive on the internet. It’s like they lack the instincts to known when they’re being scammed.
It gives me a tiny bit of hope for the future, because even though gen alpha aren’t exactly the brightest generation so far, they’re at least all fully attuned to the internet and (hopefully) better equipped to navigate its many perils.
refused to say that ivermectin is a miracle cure
What sucks the most is that ivermectin is a miracle cure! It just isn’t helpful again COVID or Hantavirus. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded (in part) for discovering ivermectin.
It’s what frustrates me the most about discussion with people like this. They’re willing to take a random drug, a drug that is fully backed by the medical community, but they’re not willing to take the drug actually recommended by the medical community.
I guess I can somewhat understand his obstinance towards you. If he admits he’s wrong, he also has to admit he had a hand in killing his wife through willful ignorance.
Truth hurts.
I’m also not talking to your father on behalf of you
And immediately saw the error in his ways? Absolutely not. These people get sick to the point of dying. Go to the emergency room and get healed through real medicine and the efforts of a dozen nurses and a doctor or two. Then they leave and brag to their friends and family “see told you I’d be fine” and never give credit to the REAL medicine that fixed the issue.
Many of my relatives are diehard MAGA. So, when Trump said not to wear masks or quarantine, my aunt and her husband and son went out of their way to basically spend every second they could at superspreader events. They were warned it was dangerous, not restricted in any way, but still felt the need to act out to validate political feelings.
Naturally, they all caught COVID in the early days. My uncle and cousin both passed, leaving my aunt as a devastated shell of a woman. When we would see each other at family dinners she would usually just sit with a far-off, forlorn look. Every once in a while she would tune in for a bit to spout some pro-Trump bullshit. I wanted to scream “He helped to kill your family!”
I decided to just stop spending time with these people before I said something I would regret.
“See? Told you I’d be fine.”
“Dad, you need to take off your leg to go through airport security.”
thanks Obama
I guess I’m glad my father is only “ancient aliens” crazy after his TBI made him a trump supporter.
I have an uncle who is basically a leftist boomer, but who is into that Art Bell kind of stuff. More recently he’s been getting into the “big pharma is keeping us sick” stuff and it’s really frustrating to see.
I guess I should be glad my TBI just made me super socially awkward and obsessive about weird niche topics.
Damn, like Fetterman. Sorry that happened to your dad.
Fetterman was an asshole before he was on the national stage.
Same with my dad, although he was a fiscal conservative before just because he’s a financial advisor and Republicans are good for business.
At least your parents are free from intestinal parasites
Start sending them articles about Steve Jobs and how he died.
Well at least they don’t have worm parasites.
It does work well for those things.
Lalalalala. Doesn’t exist. Fake news. It’s Biden fault. Drink bleach and sun your butthole.
Covid spread easily; I don’t think hantavirus is as easy to spread. However, it’s much more deadly and can be dormant for 60 days, spreading itself.
We’re pretty fucked.
That’s almost as good as my idea. I thought like a really light version of COVID with nothing but light symptoms like fever and sneezing, but it would change your DNA just the right way, so you develop a hidden FFI prion infection, leading to you eventually not being able to sleep until you die.
By the time anyone realizes it is even a thing, nearly everyone would be infected, just a few prions would be 100% fatal, and there would be nowhere on Earth to hide.
Everyone dies from lack of sleep induced dementia.
I, too have played Plague, Inc
👍
People on the floating petri dishes that are cruiseships are fucked. The rest of us are in no more danger from this than we were before.
Probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference for a ship registered in the Netherlands that never made port in the US.
Will probably be a problem down the road though
As much as I agree with the sentiment of the comment you responded to, I appreciate you for keeping the conversation grounded and honest. You deserve every upvote.
I was kinda hoping that it would lead to The Onion, alas…
The onion lost to real life years ago
If it hadn’t left the ship you’d be right, but it has. A Swiss man left the cruise and tested positive later. If he rode public transit during rush hour even once while infected it could be bad.
I’m not as familiar with Swiss transport, but I’ve been packed ass to face many of times on a train in Europe
Notable that the virus has a 1 to 8 Week incubation period. The first guy died 5 days into the trip. Implying that he(and probably his wife) brought it onto the ship.
Lot of people left, not just a “Swiss man”
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/07/nx-s1-5814632/passengers-left-ship-hantavirus-st-helena
Right if you read the article he was the only one that both left the ship and was later confirmed as infected. There was another Dutch couple that left while sick and quickly were hospitalized. My concern is he was able to move around freely all while he was unknowingly infected. He seems to be the one that had the most opportunity to spread the infection.
Others also left early and have been quarantined. They have not shown symptoms so I didn’t bring them up when discussing spread. One infected couple left early as well, but they were already sick and didn’t leave South Africa. Although they may have infected a flight attendant, still waiting on tests.
Of course the virus can have a long incubation period. So these individuals may be more relevant to discussion later. There are those that were evacuated to recieve medical treatment elsewhere, but it’s not like they are walking around their respective countries.
So first, i don’t think that article says they tracked them all.
And second, if you can test them and rule out infection with certainty, why would they be ordered to isolate?
I think the incubation period does play a role there.
Authorities in St. Helena, the volcanic British territory in the South Atlantic where passengers disembarked, said they were monitoring a small number of people who were considered “higher risk contacts.” Those contacts were being told to isolate for 45 days, the St. Helena government said.
Yes those higher risk contacts in St. Helena are those that interacted with the passangers/crew when the ship was in port. They are not the people that were passangers on board the ship that left.
And second, if you can test them and rule out infection with certainty, why would they be ordered to isolate?
I did not say this. They are testing an already ill flight attendant. You can’t test during the incubation period. Which is highly variable with this virus.
The incubation period is huge. In 40 days we’ll know if we are having another pandemic or not.
Hantavirus is not COVID. Every contagious disease isn’t spread through aerosols. Hantavirus needs close, extended contact to transfer, unlike COVID. You’re not going to get hantavirus from walking into a store.
You’re not going to get hantavirus from walking into a store.
Do you wear gloves every time you touch a door handle?
Yes I understand that. Being crammed against another person for a long enough period of time seems right. During any major holiday if you take a train you can easily spend 1 or 2 hours pressed against a few people. Seems fairly close and extended to me. Especially considering there may have already been spread of the virus from contact in an airplane.
Rush hour commutes you might be pressed against a couple of people for 20 minutes or so depending on your commute. This is close, but maybe not extended enough.
The potential is there
For transfer exclusively to people who spend extended time on very crowded public transit, maybe, but that describes a very tiny portion of Americans.
Okay now I’m confused. I was talking about the Swiss guy who returned to Switzerland and the public transit system of Europe.
I suppose we’re on a thread talking about some American public figures huffing Ivermectin, but I was more concerned about the spread. Which seems like it will kick off in Europe first
Oh, I misunderstood, because of the OP I thought we were talking about the US. I still wouldn’t worry about it, you need bodily fluid contact to transfer it. Monkeypox is more contagious and it never took off.
More to the point, on a boat with any kind of outbreak… it’s usually always related to the food storage. Main reason why I’d never go on a cruise.
Settle down, we are not fucked. Hantavirus has been around forever, even this strain.
Has it spread human to human? I thought that was a new thing.
It does with this strain/variant which is why this story is newsworthy. But the usual one does not. There have been localized outbreaks of this one in the past but never a worldwide pandemic.
What little Ive seen documented:
- It was relatively new(
20 years30 years) to the southern end of South America, they beat out an initial outbreak of it, has been endemic there since. - Not too much reaearch has been done on it, i.e. few experts.
- It appears that it is most, and potentially only infectious when symptoms are showing, particularly the fever, but is very easily spread during that small window.
- It seems like it isnt as easily spread as covid, but yeah, is much nastier.
There’s kind of two varieties. The Americas one is different to the other and was discovered more recently.
Three that I know of.
The Eurasian/African one that is the least dangerous and doesnt transmit human to human.The continental Americas strain that is pretty dangerous(lethality in the 30-60% range) but doesn’t spread human to human.
The new kid on the block, the Andes strain, an offshoot of the Americas one. Last Outbreak was in a small town in Argentina in 2018, first discovered 1995, first human to human 1996. ~40 known infections, 11 deaths. Can spread human to human. It has already been confirmed we are dealing with this one.
- It was relatively new(
So she thinks (I know, I know) that getting “natural immunity” to COVID protects her from hantavirus? The ivermectin is just the icing on the cake, honestly.
It’s what happens when practicing medical physicians forget they are not really researchers. The main problem is that medical schools do teach research, but just enough to give people a false confidence in their own abilities. Medicine covers so much information that medical school is basically just a series of introduction courses. Like with most positions as a physician, your real knowledge comes from what you actually practice during your residency and specialty training.
I specialize in orthopedics and rehabilitation, I can understand the mechanisms and physiology involved in studies done over rna virus replication, but I wouldn’t feel confident in my ability to draw conclusions from those studies that are not explicitly stated in the study itself.
From my understanding invermectin has show itself to have some promising potential for moderating rna viruses from replicating. However, it’s not very water soluble and so there are currently no effective means to actually get the medication to the affected cells. Which is why none of the studies done on cell cultures in a laboratory can’t be extrapolated upon and applied to people.
Even if you are taking 100x the recommended dose, it’s mainly just going to travel through your digestive tract and cause more harm than good.
Ew, dewormer frosting
